Afghan, Pakistani Forces Clash

Battle Over Disputed Border Outpost Complicates U.S. Plans to Wind Down War

ENLARGE

Afghans in Jalalabad on Thursday carry the body of Mohammed Qassim Khan, a border police officer killed in a clash with Pakistani troops.
Associated Press

By

Yaroslav Trofimov

Updated May 2, 2013 2:14 p.m. ET

KABUL—Afghan troops destroyed parts of the controversial border outpost recently erected by Pakistan, Afghan officials said on Thursday, following a heavy exchange of fire that caused casualties on both sides and dramatically raised tensions between the two uneasy neighbors.

One Afghan Border Police officer was killed and three injured in the overnight clash in the Goshta district of eastern Nangarhar province, Afghan officials said. While the Afghan border police said nine Pakistani troops were killed or injured, Islamabad confirmed only two injuries among its Frontier Constabulary soldiers.

The battle between the U.S.-funded and U.S.-advised Afghan security forces and the troops of nuclear-armed Pakistan brought a dangerous new complication to American efforts to wind down the Afghan war.

It came as the U.S. is beginning to ship its military gear through Pakistani ports, preparing for the withdrawal of most U.S. forces at the end of next year.

The worst clash between Afghan and Pakistani forces in more than a decade erupted a week after U.S. Secretary of State
John Kerry
met Afghan President
Hamid Karzai
and Pakistan's army chief Gen.
Ashfaq Parvez Kayani
in Brussels for talks that aimed to improve relations between the two countries and to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table.

"I hope the clashes will not escalate," Mr. Karzai told reporters during a visit to Denmark on Thursday. Yet, he added, Kabul "will do its utmost to make sure [there will be] no foreign military installations on the Afghan side" of the border.

The fighting in Goshta followed weeks of complaints from Kabul about the new border outposts, which Pakistan erected in recent months. The British-drawn boundary between the two countries is disputed by Afghanistan, which doesn't recognize the so-called Durand Line that cuts through the ethnic Pashtun heartland as an international frontier.

The line isn't properly demarcated and, while the Pakistani government says the new fortifications are on its side of the border, Afghan officials say they are as many as 30 kilometers inside Afghan territory. U.S. military maps also show the disputed outposts within Afghanistan, officials say.

The battle in Goshta sparked a furious reaction in Afghanistan on Thursday, with thousands of Afghans chanting "Death to Pakistan" as they carried the body of the slain border policeman,
Mohammed Qassim Khan,
through the streets of Nangarhar's capital city of Jalalabad.

Comments calling for war against Pakistan sprouted on Afghan social-media sites, with many users changing their profile pictures to those of Afghan border troops.

Demonstrations against Pakistan were planned outside Kabul's main mosque ahead of the weekly sermon on Friday.

Afghan Border Police spokesman
Idris Momand
said the Afghan forces, which held the disputed border outpost for several hours, retreated to their previous positions as regular Afghan National Army units rushed to the area to reinforce it.

Pakistan also confirmed that the outpost, which it calls Gursal, was again under Pakistani control on Thursday.

The two sides disagreed on who was responsible for the bloodshed. A Pakistani military official said the incident was unprovoked, and that Pakistan merely "retaliated by counter-fire" after an Afghan attack on the checkpoint.

Afghan officials say the incident began after an Afghan Border Police unit deployed on the Goshta border noticed that the Pakistani forces began additional work on fortifying their outpost, despite recent agreements to suspend such construction.

A protest made by an Afghan commander on the scene to the Pakistani commanders led to a dispute, which was followed by gunfire from Pakistani troops, they said. At around 9 p.m. on Wednesday, the Pakistani forces began shelling the Afghan positions, the Afghan officials said.

While there has been repeated Pakistani shelling in the remote areas of Kunar and Nuristan provinces in recent years, such cross-border firing was new in Goshta.

The Afghan forces responded with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, destroying three Pakistani compounds and two watchtowers, and forcing the Pakistani troops to retreat from the area at around 2 a.m. on Thursday, an Afghan official said.

Pakistan's foreign-ministry spokesman,
Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry,
said Islamabad didn't violate an agreement with Kabul that there would be no construction of new outposts on the disputed border, and that Pakistani forces were merely "engaged in renovation and repair" at the facility. "We were hoping the Afghans would cooperate in border management," he said.

U.S. Army Col.
Thomas Collins,
a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said the tripartite border commission that includes U.S., Afghan and Pakistani officers was involved in tamping down tensions.

"We have been in coordination with Afghan and Pakistani officials," he said.

Keeping the Afghan-Pakistani border open is crucial for U.S. plans to remove its military equipment from Afghanistan as the remaining 66,000 U.S. troops withdraw from the country.

Pakistani military analyst
Talat Masood,
a retired lieutenant general, said he doubted the clash would lead to the border's closure, as it would be "mutually harmful."

The fighting in Goshta wasn't the only bloodshed in Afghanistan on Thursday. In the eastern province of Logar, eight local police officers died when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.

In the Gereshk district of the southern province of Helmand, a local tribal elder was gunned down, a day after the head of the provincial peace council, tasked with negotiating with the Taliban, was killed by a roadside bomb along with two bodyguards in the same district. Afghan officials also said some 20 Taliban died across the country, including 11 killed in a coalition airstrike in Farah province.

—Habib Khan Totakhil in Kabul, Annabel Symington in Islamabad and Clemens Bomsdorf in Copenhagen contributed to this article.

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